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Passage Illustrated

It was pleasant to see Dot, with her little figure, and her baby in her
arms: a very doll of a baby: glancing with a coquettish thoughtfulness at the fire, and
inclining her delicate little head just enough on one side to let it rest in an odd,
half-natural, half-affected, wholly nestling and agreeable manner, on the great rugged
figure of the Carrier. It was pleasant to see him, with his tender awkwardness,
endeavouring to adapt his rude support to her slight need, and make his burly middle-age
a leaning-staff not inappropriate to her blooming youth. It was pleasant to observe how
Tilly Slowboy, waiting in the background for the baby, took special cognizance (though in
her earliest teens) of this grouping; and stood with her mouth and eyes wide open, and
her head thrust forward, taking it in as if it were air. Nor was it less agreeable to
observe how John the Carrier, reference being made by Dot to the aforesaid baby, checked
his hand when on the point of touching the infant, as if he thought he might crack it;
and bending down, surveyed it from a safe distance, with a kind of puzzled pride, such as
an amiable mastiff might be supposed to show, if he found himself, one day, the father of
a young canary.

"An't he beautiful, John? Don't he look precious in his sleep?"

"Very precious," said John. 'Very much so. He generally is asleep,
an't he?"

"It an't right for him to turn 'em up in that way!" said the astonished
Carrier, "is it? See how he's winking with both of 'em at once! And look at his mouth!
Why he's gasping like a gold and silver fish!" — Chapter One, "Chirp the First,"
p. 112.

Commentary

C. E. Brock, working in 1905, had a number of possible models from
which to produce this colored lithograph for The Cricket on the
Hearth because the Peerybingles as a modern, lower-middle-class version of
the Holy Family was a notion highly agreeable to the sentimental Victorians on both
sides of the Atlantic. For example, in the 1845 fourteen-image sequence Dickens's
original illustrators depicted the couple and their infant before the sacred hearth
three times. In the anthology of The Christmas Books
in the Diamond Edition, Sol Eytinge, Junior
set the keynote with a scene depicting John's joyful homecoming,
The Peerybingles.
And in the British and American Household
Editions in the 1870s both E. A. Abbey and
Fred Barnard added their versions to the pool
of visual precedents that C. E. Brock, A. A. Dixon
(1906), and Harry Furniss could consult for their
turn-of-the-century editions.

Whereas in the original of this scene, Clarkson
Stanfield's John and
Dot, the couple are seated by the fire, in a composition which implies the
enthoned John is the king of his domestic castle and Dot, by his knee, seated on a stool,
is his obedient vassal, the other 1845 illustrators depict the couple equally, as in
Daniel Maclise's Ornamental Title-page (in which Dot, despite her seat
being a mere stool, dominates the left-hand register) and
Richard Doyle's Chirp the First, which juxtaposes the working John in
his carrier's van (above, only his legs showing) and the domestic John, taking his ease
by the fire, smoking a pipe. The two, then, command different spheres in the 1845 plates,
with the maternal Dot in charge of the cottage and John's power emanating from his role
as provider. In contrast, in the British Household Edition of 1878, Fred Barnard achieves
a synthesis of the husband and wife, mutually focussed on their baby, in
John Peerybingle's
Fireside, whose jovial husband (with thinning hair and round face) appears to
have served as Brock's model. As John's head forms the apex of a pyramid, with the cat at
the base to the left and the dog at the base to the right, the couple and their infant
are as much an institution — the middle-class Victorian family — as they are
characters from a particular story.

In Brock's colour lithograph, one of just four in the entire book, encompassing both
A Christmas Carol and The Cricket on the
Hearth, incorporates some of the same elements (including Tilly Slowboy, now
relegated to a post well in the background, and the Dutch clock), but reorganizes the
figures so that they are standing, and the large dog, asleep in Barnard's composition
after accompanying his master on his rounds, is very much awake and focussed on the baby.
Still wearing the signifiers of his work outside the home, his great-coat and boots, John
in waistcoat and fustian trousers (as in the Barnard wood-engraving) bends down to Dot's
level to admire the infant, now in a plaid blanket rather than elaborate, lengthy
nightgown. Again, one receives a sense of the domestic context in the leaded panes,
curtains, chair, table spread with food, and carpet partially covering the Dorset
cottage's flagstoned floor (recalling for readers in 1905 the cottages of Thomas Hardy's
fiction). Despite these differences, the two illustrations communicate the same
sentimental picture of domestic harmony, balancing the spheres of work and dome, while
avoiding implications that John is the monarch of the little kingdom. Thus, the
illustration both conjures up the values of the Victorian past and exemplifies fin de
siecle attitudes towards the emancipation of women, albeit in a limited fashion that
still defines the female in a domestic context.

The meaning of the illustration is re-adjusted, however, by Brock's inserting the
scene of John's homecoming from "Chirp the First" into "Chirp the Second," when John
arrives to pick up Tilly, Dot, and the child from the Plummers' pic-nic, after Dot has
cleaned up the room and washed up the cups and saucers. The image of the ruddy-faced
carrier, fresh from the out-of-doors and the world of work, is congruent with his
description on the facing page as having a "brown face ruddy as a winter berry from the
keen night air" (169), even though the picture specifically directs the reader to page
112 and his initial arrival.

Relevant Illustrations of John and Dot from various editions, 1845-1906

Left: Clarkson Stanfield's atmospheric treatment of John's homecoming,
John and Dot (1845). Centre: Fred Barnard's jolly,
middle-aged carrier, and his young wife and child John
Peerybingle's Fireside (1878). Right: A. A. Dixon's sentimental treatment of the
middle-aged husband, Dot, and their child, John surveyed it from
a safe distance (1906). [Click on images to enlarge them.]

Above: E. A. Abbey's study of the Peerybingles as the modern Holy Family,
"Ain't he beautiful, John?" (1876). [Click on image to
enlarge it.]